I
lived in China from 1985 to 1996. I am not convinced by the thesis of “reduced
poverty” in China. Poverty is measured here as money income. A peasant family
that has lived largely self-sufficient, is in this statistic poorer as a wage
earner, who must live on a pittance.

But
this is exactly what happened in China between 1985 and 2005: millions of
self-sufficient Chinese farmers were driven partly into production for the
market, partly into wage dependency. This transformed independent producer-consumers
without money into wage-earners whose labor is exploited, and who provided for
the enormous increase in capital and wealth in China, and the peasants who
remained in agriculture increased agricultural productivity.

This corresponds to the primitive accumulation in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. The Chinese Communists have the
merit, in my eyes, that they have organized this process largely bloodless. But
they were not guided by socialist ideas and goals.